Showing 308 results

Authority record

Education for Mission and Ministry Unit

  • Corporate body
  • 1979-1992

The educational agency of the Executive Council has had a variety of titles and roles within the organizational structure of the Church over the years. From 1947 to 1968, it was known as the Department of Christian Education. In 1968, major elements of Council’s educational program were combined with divisions of the Home Department and other bodies as the “Services to Dioceses section” of Council; in subsequent years it seems to have been renamed the “Program Group on Education,” until about 1975, when it became the Office of Religious Education.

An Education Officer, David Perry, was appointed in 1973. Other aspects of the Church’s educational program were handled by ad hoc committees during this period, such as the Program Advisory Committee on Higher Education. Another major restructuring in 1976 eliminated ad hoc committees in favor of a system of standing committees and subcommittees. In 1979, a further wave of consolidation brought the staff and work together under the cluster title of Education for Mission and Ministry.

The Education for Mission and Ministry Unit was listed in The Church Annual up until 1991, with David Perry as its Executive Director. In 1992,the name was changed to Education, Evangelism, and Ministry Development, with David Perry still listed as Executive Director. It is unclear how and why the named changed and if the program functions also changed.

Home Department

  • Corporate body
  • 1942-1968

In October of 1942, National Council created the Home Department, which inherited the work of the pre-existing Department of Domestic Missions and combined that work with four other pre-existing divisions of the National Council: Christian Social Relations, Christian Education, College Work, and the Youth Division. In December of 1945 the Army and Navy Division was added, and in December of 1948 the Town and Country Work Division was created.

Because it oversaw the entire domestic missionary program of the Church, the work of the Home Department was wide-ranging. Ethnic ministries were led by secretaries for Native American, African American, and Japanese mission work. It also focused on providing financial support and competent clergy for African American and Native American parishes, which were often neglected or underfunded by their dioceses.

Rural work was carried out by the Town and Country Division until 1962, when the work was returned to the oversight of the newly-formed Division of Domestic Mission. The Army and Navy Division (later renamed the Armed Forces Division) primarily supported chaplains in the Armed Forces. Other domestic work included Braille books for the blind and support for clergy serving deaf Episcopalians. The Home Department also sent women workers out into the field in various capacities. In the 1960s, most of the department’s resources was directed towards urban ministries.

In 1968, a complete restructuring of Executive Council dissolved the Home Department. The work formerly grouped under the Home Department umbrella evolved into a series of “Program” groupings, under the direction of the Deputy for Program and the Presiding Bishop.

Forward Movement

  • Corporate body
  • 1934-

In the midst of the Great Depression, the Joint Commission on the Forward Movement was established in 1934 by General Convention with the charge to point the Church “forward.” The Movement sponsored conferences, meetings, and training programs for leaders along with Bible study and prayer groups under the leadership of the Rt. Rev. Henry Wise Hobson. Forward Movement’s first publications appeared in 1935, including the first issues of Forward Day by Day, a daily devotional guide. In 1940, the General Convention adopted the program elements of Forward Movement as its unifying theme under the slogan of “Forward in Service.” The Joint Commission ceased to exist in 1940, although the publications effort continued in Cincinnati under Bishop Hobson and an Executive Committee.

Although Forward Movement Publications is authorized each triennium by the General Convention with the Presiding Bishop as its chair, the agency is self-funded and does not draw on the budget of The Episcopal Church. Forward Movement specializes in the publication of devotional tracts and spiritual guides, although its range of materials expanded after 1986 with the closing of Seabury Press, which was the national Church’s publishing house. Forward Movement has also published key ecumenical documents affecting The Episcopal Church as well as other works of historical and biographical importance.

Executive Council

  • Corporate body
  • 1964-

Organized in 1964, the Executive Council is the chief oversight body for implementing the programs and corporate business of The Episcopal Church in matters affecting its domestic and foreign mission, its ecumenical relationships, and its place in civil society. The Executive Council is the direct successor body to the National Council (1919-1963) and inherits the role held by the Board of Missions of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (1835-1918). The Executive Council marks the consolidation of authority for the implementation of national and international work of the Council under the single executive office of the Presiding Bishop. Membership is composed of individuals elected by General Convention, Provincial Synods, and ex-offico members.

Division of Town and Country Work

  • Corporate body
  • 1949-1961

Following the Joint Commission on Rural Work report to the 1940 General Convention calling for more rural Church workers, a new staff officer position for “town and country” work in the Division of Domestic Mission was created. In 1949, this position expanded to a stand-alone department under the Home Department as the Division of Town and Country Work. Two years later, the Division appointed a National Advisory Committee for Town and Country Work to perform studies and make recommendations.

The Division of Town and Country Work had a particularly close relationship with the Roanridge Training Center in Missouri. The programs at Roanridge, including the Summer Parish Training Program, were administered by the National Town and Country Institute.

Emphasis on the rural mission waned in the 1960s as the national Church became more focused on urban mission. A 1961 reorganization of the Home Department saw the elimination of the Division of Town and Country, with its responsibilities being returned to the Division of Domestic Mission. The National Advisory Committee for Town and Country Work survived the reorganization and eventually dissolved in 1967.

Brooks, Robert J.

  • Person
  • 1947-2020

Robert Brooks was born on March 25, 1947, in Austin, Texas. He received a Bachelor of Arts from St. Edward's University, Austin, in 1970 and a Master of Divinity from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, in 1973. On June 22, 1974, he was ordained into the priesthood.

Brooks began his career as a parish priest at All Saints’ Church in Baytown, Texas, serving from 1973 to 1983, during which time he also earned a Master of Arts from the University of Notre Dame (1980). In the following decades, he championed the church’s sacramental rights and texts, participated in multiple liturgical organizations; advocated for human rights in South America and Africa; and represented The Episcopal Church as Director of Government Relations during the tenure of Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning. He became the rector of St. Paul’s Church in Willimantic, Connecticut in 2001. Even after his retirement in 2004, he continued to advocate for issues of social justice, serving as president of the Episcopal Urban Caucus until just prior to his death.

Canon Brooks died on February 29, 2020.

Allin, John Maury

  • Person
  • 1921-1998

John Maury Allin was born April 22, 1921 in Helena, Arkansas. He attended college and seminary at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1943 and a Master of Divinity in 1945. He was ordained to the diaconate in 1944 and to the priesthood in 1945.

Allin began his career at St. Peter’s Episcopal Mission in Conway, Arkansas, eventually moving to Louisiana where he spent 8 years serving in various pastoral roles, beginning with a curacy at St. Andrew’s Church in New Orleans. In 1952, he was called to serve as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Monroe, Louisiana and then, in 1958, agreed to serve as president and headmaster of All Saints College in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

In 1961, Allin was elected as Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Mississippi, which began his progression within the leadership of The Episcopal Church. On the retirement of Bishop Duncan Gray in 1966, he became the Sixth Bishop of the Diocese of Mississippi, a position in which he served until 1974. During this time he helped found the Committee of Concern, an ecumenical and civic alliance organized to raise funds for the rebuilding of over 100 African American churches that had been burned by white racist groups.

In 1973, at the 64th General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, the House of Bishops elected Allin the 23rd Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. He was installed on June 11, 1974. Allin’s tenure commenced at a time of considerable turbulence and change in The Episcopal Church, which he approached with a talent for compromise and a resolve to promote reconciliation. During this time, the Church approved the ordination of women (1976), an issue to which Allin was firmly opposed; began the Venture in Mission (VIM) campaign, a major fundraising effort for special mission and ministry (1976); adopted a new Book of Common Prayer (1979); and established the Office of Black Ministries.

Allin retired as Presiding Bishop in 1985, but remained active in the Church until his death in Jackson, Mississippi on March 6, 1998.

Torok, John

  • Person
  • 1890-1955

John Torok, born in Hungary in 1890 to a Jewish father and a Christian mother, arrived in the United States in 1920 and received into the Episcopal priesthood by Diocese of Maryland Bishop Murray on June 9, 1921.

In 1923, a group of Uniate churches in Pittsburgh elected Torok as their bishop, with the idea that he would lead them out of the Roman Catholic communion and into The Episcopal Church. Torok was consecrated on October 19, 1924 at the Serbian Legation Chapel in Vienna by Bishop Gorazd and Bishop Dositej, both Orthodox bishops. Upon Torok’s return, he found that due to other plans regarding intercommunion being carried out at the same time, any exercise of his episcopal privilege would likely result in a split in the Church.

To mitigate potential discord, Torok retired to secular life. However, several years later a renewal of interest in intercommunion brought him back to Church life. After much canvassing on his behalf by Bishop Frank Wilson of Eau Claire, Torok was elected Suffragan Bishop of that diocese in May of 1934. His primary focus was foreign language work among the Uniate peoples in Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland, but Bishop Wilson could get neither firm approval nor firm disapproval for this work from the rest of the Church. Furthermore, General Convention declined to confirm Torok’s consecration.

Torok returned to secular employment until 1946, when he took up parish work, first in Mexico and later in Puerto Rico. From 1947 to 1950 he served Grace Church in Brooklyn.

John Torok died in 1955.

Advisory Commission on Ecclesiastical Relations

  • Corporate body
  • 1931-1939

The Advisory Commission on Ecclesiastical Relations was created by the authority of the General Convention in 1931 in its revision of Canon 59(v)(v). The National Council subsequently added the Advisory Commission to its bylaws to replace the earlier Committee on Ecclesiastical Relations, that had been set up in 1927 to consider matters of expanding ecumenical relationships.

By 1935, reduced budgets made it necessary to discontinue the salaried officer. A 1937 revision to Canon 59 dropped the Commission and left oversight of this work to the Presiding Bishop and Council. The Commission and an unsalaried officer were continued with a small budget allocation. The broader ecumenical purview of the Commission was extended by Bishop Tucker in 1939, who renamed the body as the Advisory Council on Ecclesiastical Relations.

Wilson, Frank Elmer

  • Person
  • 1885-1944

Born on May 21, 1885, in Kittaning, Pennsylvania, Frank Wilson graduated from Hobart College in 1907. He graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity from General Theological Seminary in New York in 1910 and was ordained a priest later that year. After serving in various churches and as an Army chaplain during World War I, he became rector of Christ Church Cathedral in Eau Claire, Wisconsin in 1919. In 1928, Wilson was elected as the first Bishop of the new Diocese of Eau Claire and was consecrated in 1929.

Frank Elmer Wilson died in office on February 16, 1944.

White, William

  • Person
  • 1748-1836

William White, the first Bishop of Pennsylvania (1787-1836), was born into a wealthy and prominent family in Philadelphia in 1748. He was educated at the College of Philadelphia, where he eventually received his Doctor of Divinity degree. Ordained deacon in 1770 and priest in 1772, White became first assistant minister and then rector of Christ Church and St. Peter’s in Philadelphia, a position in which he served for the remainder of his life. He also served as chaplain of the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War, president of the first and fourth General Conventions, and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America from 1795 until his death in 1836. Additionally, White played a leading role in many civic organizations and educational institutions such as the Philadelphia Bible Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the General Theological Seminary.

Bishop White was a critical figure in the formation of the Protestant Episcopal Church, contributing not only as a talented organizer and a pragmatic reconciler between differing opinions, but also as a proponent of constitutional law and republican forms of government. His accepted recommendations for the Church constitution that included the establishment of The Episcopal Church as a self-governing and independent ecclesiastical body, the inclusion of laity with equal representation as clergy in governing bodies, and the right of dioceses to elect their own bishops. In addition, he proposed a new Prayer Book and planned for obtaining the episcopate from the English bishops that would extend the line of apostolic succession to America without requiring bishops to swear allegiance to the King of England.

Votaw, Maurice Eldred

  • Person
  • 1899-1981

Maurice Votaw began his service as a missionary in 1922 after applying for a post at St. John’s University in Shanghai, China. After helping to found the School of Journalism there, he taught journalistic writing, history, principles of journalism and advertising, and copy editing for seventeen years.

In 1939, during the tumultuous years of the Sino-Japanese War, Votaw was asked to become an advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Information in Chungking. A leave of absence from St. John's lengthened into a stay of nine years, as returning to Shanghai was deemed unsafe. After his return in 1948, he was elected Dean of the College of the Arts at St. John's. This appointment lasted only a year, however, as the Communist forces drew nearer to the city, and in 1949, Votaw returned to the United States on what he later recalled as “the last regularly scheduled ship.”

From 1950 until his retirement in 1970, Votaw taught journalism at the University of Missouri. He is remembered as a pioneering figure at the School of Journalism, a graduate who helped to carry “the Missouri Method” to China, and returned to give what he learned in China back to the students of Missouri.

Maurice Votaw died in 1981.

Turnbull, Helen Brogden

  • Person
  • 1907-2001

Helen Brogden Turnbull was born in Baltimore, Maryland on June 23, 1907. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Goucher College in Towson, Maryland in 1929 and completed her graduate studies at Teachers College of Columbia University, Union Theological Seminary, and Windham House.

After earning her master’s degree in Religious Education, she accepted a position as the Executive Secretary of College Work for the Episcopal Church in the Province of New England. In 1944, she became the director of Windham House, the national graduate training center for women of The Episcopal Church. During this time she was also a part-time lecturer in religious education at both Union Theological Seminary and General Theological Seminary.

After ten years at Windham House, Turnbull was appointed to the staff of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Switzerland, serving as associate secretary in the Department on Cooperation of Men and Women in Church and Society. Organizational changes in her department led to her resignation, after which she began working for United Church Women of the National Council of Churches as Director of Leadership and Field Outreach.

A 1966 reorganization led to the separation of United Church Women from the National Council of Churches. Turnbull was named Director of Ecumenical Relations of the renamed body known as Church Women United.

Upon leaving Church Women United in 1969, she worked as the director of the Hannah Harrison School (in association with the YWCA in Washington, D.C.) for three years before retiring in 1973.

Helen Brogden Turnbull died on July 23, 2001 in Towson, Maryland.

Tsu, Andrew Yu Yue

  • Person
  • 1885-1986

The Rt. Rev. Andrew Y.Y. Tsu was Bishop of the Missionary District of Yung-Kwei in Southwest China and General Executive Secretary of the Holy Catholic Church in China from 1940 to 1950. He presided over the Church in China during tumultuous times, including the Sino-Japanese War and the Communist Revolution, which ultimately forced him out of office. He retired to the United States and the Diocese of Delaware in 1950.

Andrew Y. Y. Tsu died in 1986 at the age of 100.

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